my answer is yes. Yes!"

Legree grinned his saturnine smile through a blue wreath of smoke and
Morgan sat back in his chair with an almost silent exhalation. The
rest of the group seated around that great table affected me hardly at
all one way or another. Suggs was the spokesman for one faction and
I--well, Morgan was willing to let me talk; the Old Man was sunk in
the dumb obscurity of his chair, and who else was there to speak for
me? Who else?

All right, Miller. Take it slow and easy. Watch your temper. Say what
you have that's important, and let it go at that. But--say it!

Now, there's one thing I learned long ago; you get a lot further if
the other loses his temper first, and the best way to pry the lid of a
temper is the use of the unexpected. The man who is handy with his
hands will crack wide open with ridicule, with words used as the
lever. The man who is handy with words is a different nut to crack;
slap him down with insults while his verbal guard is down. If his
temper doesn't snap in the first two minutes, it never will.

So, because I thought it was the right thing to say, and because I
didn't like the Senator anyway, I said, "Senator Suggs, you talked
plain. That's good. I like men who talk plain. Let's have some more of
that talk. Let's get this right on the record for everyone here to see
and hear.

"I don't like you, Senator. I like neither you nor your ideas, nor
anything about you or your thoughts. How long has it been, Senator,
since anyone has told you right to your face--not in a newspaper--that
you're a self-convinced liar and a hypocrite, and that you and your
ideas and everything about you stink to high heaven?"

"Stink" was the word that got him. He'd expected a nice gentlemanly
quarrel with gentlemanly words above the table and rapiers below, and
instead had walked around the corner and taken a barrel-stave across
the mouth. His face flushed in an instant to a livid unhealthy red,
his lips pulled away from his yellow teeth, his eyes seemed to
protrude visibly. A beautiful sight.

It took him long seconds to throttle his gasping shock. I gave him
just enough time to inhale for a long tirade, just long enough to open
that fish-like mouth for words that might have been anything, then I
let him have it again. And I don't know whether or not I told you, I
was a sergeant before I got busted back to private, first class.

"Shut up!" I bellowed, and my roar boomed back at me from all tho